President Donald Trump is set to nominate Callista Gingrich, wife of former House speaker Newt Gingrich, to be the next US ambassador to the Vatican.
The nomination is expected to be formalized before Trump meets with Pope Francis on May 24 in Rome, and once the Office of Government Ethics gives its approval, CNN reported Sunday.
Newt Gingrich, 73, was one of the few big-name Republicans to support Trump during the 2016 presidential campaign.
He was speaker of the House of Representatives — second in line in the US presidential succession chart — from 1995 to 1999, and was notably vociferous in his calls to impeach president Bill Clinton over the Monica Lewinsky sex scandal.
The potential nomination carries some controversy: Callista Gingrich is the former speaker’s third wife and had a multiyear sexual relationship with him when she was a young congressional aide named Callista Bisek and he was still married to his second wife.
After a messy divorce from his second wife in 1999, he married Callista the following year. He credits Callista with his conversion to Catholicism.
Marrianne Gingrich told ABC News in 2012 when her ex-husband was running for president that he wanted an open marriage so he could continue to date Callista. He said the claim was not true.
Trump mentioned the possibility of the ambassadorship in January, but the Gingrichs have been so frustrated with the slow vetting process that they have threatened to withdraw Callista’s name, The New York Times reported.
The former House speaker confirmed the discussions The Times but said he and his wife had been told to ‘be very cautious’ until an announcement.
Callista’s name initially came up as a way to get her husband, an adviser to Trump in the transition, out of the way, a source in January had said.
Newt Gingrich is a regular guest on Fox News and has provided assessments of Trump’s administration that are supportive but sometimes nagging.
He was talked about for a cabinet position in the days after the election, yet swatted the prospect down.
Gingrich told McClatchy he would be ‘focused on strategic planning,’ instead. He did not say whether it was his choice to remove himself from consideration for an official position or Trump’s.
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